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'The fact that the Flame group shared their source code with the Stuxnet group shows they cooperated at least once.'

The security firm said while the two
viruses were probably developed independently and are built on different
platforms they shared pieces of code during their creation.

Flame: The sophisticated virus has been used to spy on computer systems

Alexander
Gostev, Kaspersky Lab’s chief security expert, told Fox: 'What we
have found is very strong evidence that the Stuxnet/Duqu and Flame
cyber weapons are connected.'

Experts say Flame bears a 'striking resemblance' to a module discovered in the earlier versions of Stuxnet.

It is thought that two different teams worked on the programmes but collaborated from time to time, the firm added.

Security experts have suspected links among Flame, Stuxnet and Duqu - another piece of malicious software that was discovered last year - but Kaspersky Lab is the first to say it found hard evidence.

Other private security companies were also racing to uncover the secrets of Flame and will soon weigh in on Kaspersky's latest findings.

If the U.S. is proven to be a force behind Flame, it would confirm the country that invented the internet is involved in cyber espionage - something for which it has criticised China, Russia and other nations.

A Pentagon report last year that outlined the still-evolving U.S. cyber strategy said economic espionage could prove the greatest threat to America's long-term interests, pointing to thefts of industrial and defence secrets via Internet spyware.

'There's a Balkanization of cyberspace that's occurring, and companies need to choose which side they're on,' said Dmitri Alperovich, co-founder of U.S. security firm CrowdStrike.

Collaboration: Experts say they have found evidence that the two programmes shared the same source code

Kaspersky said Flame was developed with a different set of tools than Stuxnet, though it added that its analysis would take many months to reach its final conclusions.

After digging deeper, Kaspersky revealed on Monday that its researchers had identified segments of Flame and a version of Stuxnet released in 2009 that were nearly identical - suggesting the engineers who built the two viruses had access to the same set of source code.

Researchers have been looking for a connection between Stuxnet and Flame because both viruses infected machines by taking advantage of a Windows flaw to launch the 'autorun' feature, and infected personal computers from a small drive inserted via USB slot.

The section of code now cited as connecting the two pieces of malicious software not only concerns that flaw but does so in the same style.

Stuxnet was discovered in 2010 and has been closely scrutinised by the world's smartest cyber sleuths. Yet Flame remained hidden until last month, when a UN agency asked Kaspersky Lab to look for a virus that Iran said had sabotaged its computers, deleting valuable data.

When Kaspersky's team started looking for suspicious files in the Middle East, they found Flame.

Analysts already widely regard Flame as one of the most sophisticated pieces of malicious software ever detected, along with Stuxnet and its data-stealing cousin, Duqu.